A continuation of events surrounding the drug war and related social issues of Baja California and Mexico. Keeping an eye on Seig Heil Trump. We are still trying to restore all blogs from 2006 which were hacked by Linton Robinson and his team, famous for supporting the Baja Trump Towers on one of his real estate sites. Highlights of Paris-Simone's favorite music !!

Thursday, June 29, 2017

There have been so many aberrant Trump moves and plays it is difficult to keep up with all of them. The partially reinstated travel ban which is being viewed as a "victory" for Trump is scary. As one person commented:

"How many times have I written a reminder that Hitler is reputed to have said, "To
truly control a country, you must first control its courts. Then,
whatever you do is legal and whatever the opposition does is illegal."? That pertained to the Nazi Third Reich and it worked very well for them."

Pounding his chest and calling this a victory Trump is mobilizing his willing henchmen with orders to crack down on immigration and sanctuary cities.

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Despite the fact that he is disliked and distrusted around the globe and a liar (courtesy New York Times), Trump continues to slash and burn with great gusto across the nation and to other countries - here are just a few:

"Trump
appointments are actually anti-appointments. When he makes you head of
something, that means head of demolishing that particular institution.
Dismantle it, poison it from the inside and make sure it’s dead. Rotten
son of a bitch."

The list is endless, and the backdoor deals are disturbing. So, where are the Democrats? You gotta be kidding me, right? Useless, and Jerry Brown who I used to put on a pedestal stabbed us in the back:

"Nothing better
illustrates the political bankruptcy of the Democratic Party—for all
progressive intents and purposes—than California State Assembly Speaker
Anthony Rendon’s announcement on Friday afternoon that he was going to
put a “hold” on the single-payer health care bill (SB 562) for the
state, effectively killing its passage for at least the year.

The Democratic Party finds itself in a bind in California. They hold
the governorship and a supermajority in both houses of the legislature,
so they can pass any bill they want. SB 562 had passed the Senate 23-14.

There was enormous enthusiasm among California progressive activists,
who, with organizations like Campaign for a Healthy California (CHC,)
and the National Nurses United (NNU,) and the California Nurses
Association (CNA) were working tirelessly, and hopeful of success.
After all, Bernie’s people were taking over the California party from
the bottom since the election. I recall a night of drinking last year
with an old friend who has been spearheading that effort, as he rebuffed
my skepticism, and insisted that this time there would be a really
progressive takeover of the California party, and single-payer would
prove it. After all, once enough progressive pressure was been put on
the legislators, the bill would be going to super-progressive Democratic
Governor, Jerry Brown, who had made advocacy of single-payer a
centerpiece of his run for President in 1992, saying:
“We treat health care not as a commodity to be played with for profit
but rather the right of every American citizen when they’re born.”
Bernie foretold.

Unfortunately, today that Governor is, according to Paul Song,
co-chair of the CHC, “doing everything he can to make sure this never
gets on his desk.” And it won’t. Unfortunately, all the Democrats like
Rendon, who “claims to be a personal supporter of single-payer,” will
make sure that their most progressive governor is not put in the
embarrassing position of having to reject what he’s been ostensibly
arguing for for twenty-five years, of demonstrating so blatantly what a
fraud his, and his party’s, progressive pretensions are.

Thus unfolds the typical Democratic strategy: Make all kinds of
progressive noises and cast all kinds of progressive votes, while
carefully managing the process so that the legislation the putatively
progressives putatively support never gets enacted. Usually, they blame
Republican obstructionism, and there certainly is enough of that, and
where there is, it provides a convenient way for Democrat legislator to
“support” legislation they know will be blocked and wouldn’t really
enact themselves if they could.

In the California case, the dissembling is obvious. The Republicans
can’t be blamed. The only thing standing in the way of single-payer in
California is the Democratic Party. As it was on the national level in
2009, when Obama and the Democrats could have passed any healthcare bill
they wanted, just as they passed the Republican-inspired, gift to the
for-profit health insurance industry, the ACA—without a single
Republican vote. It was true-believing capitalist Democrats like Max
Baucus, led by Obama and his sidekick Rahm Emanuel (who called leftists “fucking retarded”) who arrested
single-payer activists (including doctors) in order to prevent
single-payer from even being considered. It was they who strong-armed
reluctant Democratic legislators, who had signed an oath not to do so,
into passing a bill that leaves 28 million Americans without health insurance, and forces the rest into plans whose premiums rise and networks of coverage shrink every year.

In fact, the perfectly reasonable discontent with that plan probably
had more to do with helping Trump win than did any actions of bad-old
(as opposed to good-new) James Comey. As Marcy Wheeler pointed out, in a analysis that’s contested
but should certainly not be ignored, Hillary’s fatal slide in the polls
began before Comey’s notorious letter of October 28th, and coincided
with the announcement, four days before, of steep Obamacare premium
increases. You decide whether you think Anthony Weiner’s sexting emails,
part three, had more effect on voters than anger over being hit with
stiff premium increases (22% average, 25% in 20 states, 60% in some) on increasingly crappy policies:
So the Democrats create the ground for Trump by passing a lousy
healthcare law that’s sure to piss people off rather quickly, then use
the even worse plan that the Republicans come up with to do nothing but
trash Trump, while blocking real progressives’ attempts to get the only
plan that would actually cover all Americans and save money. In Colorado
last November, Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper refused to support
a single-payer referendum because he “didn’t want to disrupt” the
“strides [made] under Obamacare.” The Democrats’ ACA marched the nation
straight into the shoals of Trump and the Republicans’ ACHA, and now the
Democrats are blocking the only plan that solves the problems of both.

As Deborah Burger, Co-President of the California Nurses Association
put it, Assembly Speaker Rendon, “Acting in secret in the interests of
the profiteering insurance companies late Friday afternoon abandons all
those people already threatened by Congress and the Trump
administration.”
The excuse, of course, from California Democrats and Governor Jerry
Brown is that they don’t know how they are going to pay for it,
especially on the state level. That would be the same Jerry Brown who
explained in 1992 exactly how single-payer would cut costs:

You cut out all the private health insurance. You have
one single payer either at the national level or through the 50 states.
And that one single payer will be the one that negotiates with the
doctors, the hospitals, and the other providers. And since you have only
one source of income in the whole medical establishment, you can drive
down the cost.

Leaving aside the indispensable point that healthcare, like education
and clean water, should be considered a non-discretionary expense, one
of the main advantages of single-payer is precisely that it’s the only
plan that can cut costs significantly. Not having single-payer will not
mean healthcare will cost less; it will cost more every year, for every
person and in the aggregate. It just means the for-profit insurance and
pharmaceutical companies won’t care. The real problem with single-payer
isn’t about costs to the people or to the state; it’s about profits for
those companies.

Besides, an economy the size of California has immense power. We’re
not talking about Utah. All the hospitals and doctors and pharmaceutical
companies are not going to stop selling their goods and services in
California. And once single-payer becomes a reality in California, it
will catalyze a movement in every other state and on the national level.
That—the fact that it will start a wildfire of imitation—and
not the fact that it’s too expensive, is what the California Democratic
Party is desperate to avoid, and what its donors and lobbyists are
ordering it to block.

This is the Democratic Party. Lying losers who will do anything to
avoid taking an effective stance for a healthcare policy that would
immediately solve one of the worst horrors American families face every
day, that would be immediately and concretely helpful to everyone, and,
to top it all off, would be immensely popular. The dissembling Democrats
are throwing away just about the most popular policy anyone could
imagine—something people are literally dying for. As Charles Idelson,
spokesman for the NNU, says:
“There is broad support for single-payer not only in California, but
nationally, even among registered Republicans and Republican and
conservative business leaders.”
Passing single-payer in California and fighting for it everywhere else would guarantee the Democrats electoral victories. But they will not do it—they’ll
say they will, but they will not—because they are fervent supporters of
the capitalist market system in healthcare (and everything else), and
they are corrupt agents of the health insurance and pharma industries.

Because it captures and cages the energies of so many well-meaning
progressives, the Democratic Party is the most effective obstacle to,
and enemy of, single-payer, and it has to be fought. People in
wheelchairs and cancer patients and all their healthy friends should be
sitting in and obstructing Democrat Rendon’s, as well as any
Republican’s, office, until he lets the bill through. Then they should
move on to the Democratic governor’s office. And thence to Pelosi’s and
Schumer’s offices as well as Graham’s and Ryan’s. This is not a Trump
problem, and not a Republican problem, it’s a bipartisan capitalist
elite problem.

We have to engage in this kind of fight against all of these
politicians. Anyone who thinks such a fight can be avoided in order to
play the Democrats’ game of defending the for-profit insurance plan
called Obamacare while obsessing about Trump being a Russian spy, is
helping to perpetuate this rotten healthcare system. Twenty-eight
million people are now without healthcare, and, if the Republicans’
edited version of Obamacare passes (which it probably won’t, because
even many Republicans know they can’t get away with making things worse
than they are), there’ll be twenty-four million more. There is no time
for either of these contemptuous parties and their contemptuous
bullshit."

As a footnote, Elizabeth Warren who has basically ho-hummed Single Payer is now singing a different tune, Washington Post explains.

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I asked Mike tonight, so what if the Supreme Court's decision on the US (Muslim ) Travel Ban is completely approved in October ? Are people going to rebel ? He said, "Nope." But you know, sometimes Mike isn't always right.

Update 06/29 2:13pm: Mike left me a note and said, "I'm always right about everything" LOL, gave me a smile. Anyway, it is midafternoon, Paris pulled down the new roll of paper towels which are now strewn all across the house, got into and spilled the dry cat food, ate sweet peas and threw up in the living room, peepee by the slider because the feral cats are freaking her out,chewed on the stationary bike, pulled down the Bass brush and chewed it, and tried to pull down the new rangoon blinds and I haven't even started making the southern fried chicken (this is about the only fried food we eat once in a blue moon), making the cole slaw and home made mashed potatoes plus the laundry is stacking up with four peepee towels to wash separate . She is a whirling dervish, wild like the wind. I gave up on the pie. Maybe I'll be back after midnight.end edit.

To keep abreast on everything Trump and all the latest: (More on the sidebar)

We are coming quickly to the end of June, I'll be back with the latest updates on the drug war events in our area. Been super busy here making potato and broccoli salads and pies for summer get togethers, Paris has been a handful - next week she is going to see Dr. Beth up in Ramona for a special RX on flea meds. Mike had an MRI on his knee, we'll see how that one goes.